A Typology for Visual Collections

by James M. Turner

At the annual workshop on classification research at the 1997 ASIS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, breakout groups on various topics were formed. The discussion of the group covering visual information was led by Corinne Jörgensen. The group identified the need for some kind of typology of visual collections in order to gain an understanding of the nature of the organization of such material. It was noted that within the field of information science, activity centers very much on the organization of text-based materials, and rightly so. However, there is a perception, within institutions and within the field in general, that visual information is less serious, less important than text-based information; that its primary role is as support material; and that it is often associated with entertainment and non-scholarly pursuits. This perception is associated with the (defensible) notion that since librarians and information scientists have much more experience with text than with pictures, scarce resources are better used if they are devoted to managing textual information. These factors contribute to the tendency to lump all picture collections into a single category of materials (other than text), then to devote resources to organizing these collections only as a lesser priority, to relegate them to wish lists or simply to ignore them.

There was a consensus among the members of the breakout group concerning the need to describe the world of visual collections in greater detail in order to gain an understanding of its richness and complexity and to help explain it to others. The most useful way to accomplish these goals seemed to be to construct a typology of visual collections as a way of exploding this general category and of identifying some of the kinds of collections that exist.

About this time, a new doctoral program in information science had been approved at the School for Library and Information Sciences at the Université de Montréal, and three people among the first group of doctoral students accepted into the program were interested in pursuing topics in the organization of visual information. The problem of constructing a typology for picture collections was proposed as part of the course work for these three students, and the work was carried out as part of a research seminar. The intellectual work of elaborating the typology proved to be rather more complex than expected because the group quickly realized that simply listing the types of collections in existence was far from enough.

The typology was crafted starting from brainstorming sessions in which all GRIV (Groupe départemental de recherche en information visuelle [Visual Information Research Group]) members participated. Once the main modules had been identified and the basic relationships among them established, responsibility for researching each module was assigned to an individual member. Documentation available in the school's library science library, on the Web, and other sources such as other libraries and private collections was consulted to help in filling out the various categories and lists. It was quickly clear that exhaustive lists could become infinitely long in some cases. Thus the principle of providing enough information to establish the existence of the category and to give examples of membership in the category was adopted. The guiding principle was to be representative, but not exhaustive.

The final product was a chart depicting the World of Visual Collections in French and English (see sidebar.) Material gathered by individual members was pooled, and the group made decisions about what to include in the poster constructed to represent the typology. In the chart, the major modules gravitate around a representation of responsibility for collections. Since the chart cannot meaningfully be reduced for reproduction here, the conceptual structure of the English version has been extracted in Figure 1. This figure shows the major modules with a few examples of the items included when the module name alone is not sufficient definition.

As a note: since the GRIV group works in French, the French-language version of the typology should be considered the "official" version, and the English-language version a translation and adaptation. There are a few discrepancies between the two. For example, the list of Crafts in French includes Charpentier, Èbéniste, and Menuisier, and these are reduced to Cabinetmaker and Carpenter in English, the nuances reflecting the organization of these crafts in the cultures using each language.

Four major modules of the world of collections emerged:

• Types of institutions that house collections. One institution can have a single collection, large or small, or its mandate can include managing several visual collections as well as other types of collections.
• Types of users and uses of visual collections, since use is such an important factor in determining how collections should be organized.
• The activities associated with creating and organizing collections.
• Types of images, including types of picture-making techniques, as well as some classification of the way pictures are consulted, with and without the aid of machines because collections are often organized in terms of the production techniques used for making the pictures.

Activities

Graphic Presentation   A research group entitled Groupe départemental   de recherche en information visuelle (Visual   Information Research Group) has been formed at   the school of library and information sciences at   the Université de Montréal. The group was able   to make an arrangement whereby a student   finishing a degree program in graphic arts at the   Université du Québec à Montréal was recruited   to design a poster displaying the results of the   project, as well as a logo for the research group,   in exchange for credit in her program. A small   research budget was obtained to cover the costs   of printing the 36 x 24 poster in five colors, and   on two sides, one in English, one in French. The   poster is entitled The World of Visual   Collections.   The graphic presentation of the GRIV poster   shows colored spheres, each color representing   an aspect of the typology. The categories are   responsibility for collections, intellectual aspects,   physical aspects, institutional aspects and user   aspects. The spheres suggest the molecular   nature of the facets, and one can imagine various   molecule packages being made up from the   numerous available combinations of various   aspects from each category. Each aspect takes   up a particular area of the poster, and an attempt   is made to show interactions between the areas,   through the central function of responsibility for   collections.

Finally, there is a section dealing with the activities of those responsible for the collections. The Activities list includes Acquisition, Selection, Dissemination and Restoration. A related list, called Intellectual Organization, includes cataloguing, classification and indexing. Another related list, called Mandates and Responsibilities, includes collection; exhibition and display; and preservation. For simplicity, these have been compiled into a single list in Figure 1 .

Images

The section on images shows types of images such as news pictures, caricatures, religious images, scientific pictures, etc., as a first division. This list has a subsection for still images, moving images and animation, and another for 2D and 3D images. Next, there is a division by the way images are consulted, either directly or through the use of machines. These sections are called Direct Consultation and Mediated Consultation. Direct Consultation has a subdivision of 2D supports, examples of which are posters, banners, drawings, icons, wallpaper, and so on; and a subdivision of 3D supports, examples of which include lampshades, ceramics, medals, T-shirts, etc. As with the list of types of collecting institutions, the content of these lists represents a number of examples, again with no claim to exhaustivity. Indeed, an exhaustive list of 3D supports which are potential carriers of images would be infinitely long. The section on Mediated Consultation has subdivisions for films, magnetic supports, optical supports, magneto-optical supports, consumer formats and other. This latter subdivision includes autochromes, daguerreotypes and lantern slides.

Finally, the typology should be considered only a first pass at describing the world of visual collections. The GRIV group is aware that a number of other ways to organize and present the information could have been used and that the examples used to illustrate each category could be very different from those chosen. However, it is felt that a serious reflection on this interesting problem and an in-depth discussion of it have been achieved. In addition, the group succeeded in producing a graphic representation of the typology which can be used to study and explain the great diversity and complexity of the world of visual collections. The typology, in the form of the poster the group produced, was presented for the first time at the 1998 ASIS Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh and has been shown in other contexts since then. The GRIV group welcomes your comments for clarifying or re-organizing the information in the poster. Copies of the poster can be obtained on a cost-recovery basis by contacting the author, james.turner@umontreal.ca..

FIGURE 1. The World of Visual Collections COLLECTIONS RESPONSIBILITY FOR COLLECTIONS Personal or Institutional (collecting) Entities Users Activities Images   By public/private   By level   local, national,   international By type of institution or sponsor   artists, libraries,   newspapers and   magazines By physical organization   art libraries, slide   libraries, film   archives By collector   Library of Congress   Netherlands Film   Museum   Time-Life Syndicate By type of use   consultation,   reproduction By profession or status   artist, cabinet maker,   engineer, biologist             Collection   Selection   Acquisition   Weeding Centralization Processing Intellectual Organization Preservation Restoration Exhibition and display Dissemination   By type   By genre or purpose   comic strips,   religious images,   advertising   images   By moving/stil   By 2D/3D By technique   chalk, watercolor   mezzotint, ultra-   sound scan By type of consultation   Direct, by support   bags, paintings,   wallpaper, costumes,   holograms, pottery   Mediated, by support   film strips, x-rays,   VHS, DVD Mandate or responsibility User aspects Physical aspects Institutional aspects

 

James M. Turner is professeur adjoint [assistant professor] in the Ècole de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information at the Université de Montréal. He can be reached by e-mail at james.turner@umontreal.ca